Dickens created Essay

All the characters that Dickens’s has labelled criminals, Toby Crackit, Mr Chitling and Kags Adress and respond to each other very sarcastically and also very aggressively, in a way that suggests to the reader that they are not all friends as you first think and that they have no loyalty to each other and are just with each other because they have the same basis of work and business ethics. Fagin is described in chapter 50 as he is getting arrested as a rough, battling character struggling with the police and being all muddy and bleeding, Dickens has put Fagin in this situation which could best describe him and what he is all about, not necessarily his features, but his links with the police and his links with crime. Dickens describes the main criminal in chapter 50 at his lowest point, when he enters that room with his fellow criminals, ‘Blanched face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath; it was the very ghost of Sikes. This sentence is full of short descriptive sentences that are saying to the readers that Sikes is destroyed, he has been hiding away for the crime of murder and is just a translucent figure of Sikes when he used to be a strong and ironically ghastly figure with no power, Sikes is now battered, Sikes has now got nothing and Sikes is on the run! Leading up to the climax of chapter 50 Dickens describes the mob of Londoners chasing down Sikes in the tight alleys and roads of London, he depicts them as a crowd of a ‘strong struggling current of angry faces’ that are all out after Sikes ‘the murderer’, Dickens has used those descriptions to show the sheer scale of the force wanting to capture this one man, a current of people, suggesting it is like a river of people flowing along the streets. Later in the scene an old man cries ‘I will give fifty pounds to the man who takes him alive’, fifty pounds in those times was an enormous amount of money which again shows the sheer scale of the wanting of this man. The climax is ultimately the death of Bill Sikes in this chapter, when Sikes is on that roof ready to try his escape Dickens finally de-humanises the villain at last by instead of calling him Sikes calling him ‘the murderer’ to tell the audience just exactly what he is, which is nothing. The way Dickens depicts the death of Sikes is very dramatic in the way that he dies, jumping off a roof and accidentally hanging yourself isn’t the best way to go or the most common in any story, Dickens used this way of death to give justice, melodrama and a gothic feel which would add real feel to how the audience would feel at the death of a person who has been hated by most throughout the whole story. The speed of Sikes death is quite important, the use of verbs such as staggering, tumbled, which is when Sikes loses his balance and goes over the edge of the building. Sikes death is also set at night time to add a little more drama and a chase factor to the dramatic end. The noose in those times was common for convicted murderers to receive when arrested, so for Sikes to die in a noose was justified in the end. Dickens had a message to the reader in the end of this chapter which is to draw attention to a range of social injustices in those times, which means a lot of people getting away with crimes which obviously dickens felt strongly about, Dickens didn’t just simply tell people about this he used a range of techniques to excite the reader and to please the reader. Overall Dickens created this chapter to avenge Nancy’s death, we know this because Sikes cries ‘The eyes again! ‘ referring to Nancy’s eyes. Which leaves the reader feeling happy about Sikes death and making the reader want to read his next edition in his paper.